Northern Kentucky legislator hopes to make impact by serving on national mental health and substance abuse task force

FRANKFORT — State Rep. Addia Wuchner, R-Florence, has been named to a nationwide task force to work on policies related to mental health and substance abuse.

Wuchner, along with Rep. Joni Jenkins, D- Louisville, were appointed to the Women In Government’s National Task Force on Mental Health and Substance Use, which is comprised of women legislators across the U.S. who have been leaders on issues pertaining to mental health and substance abuse policies.

Wuchner, who just returned from the task force meeting this past weekend in Las Vegas, says that the vision of the panel is to collectively look across the board at different parameters such as prevention, awareness, education, judicial, housing, medication and public safety.

“We would look at legislation that was out there, looking at new ideas that could come through, look at what we could learn from one another and create a tool box which doesn’t mean there is just one remedy, but there are tools in each bucket or page that could be presented from this task force as a body of work to take back to their states,” Wuchner said.

Wuchner says that the collaborative approach to creating policies to treat mental health and substance use disorders is something that northern Kentucky already does well.

“Our Northern Kentucky Drug Task Force and the work that they’ve done by bringing the stakeholders together from law enforcement to the county judge, the medical community to the jailers to everyone that’s working and targeting those issues,” she said.